Introduction to Zotero

Adding notes to a reference:

• Select the reference in the Zotero library.
• Click the 'Notes' tab in the right pane.
• Click 'Add'  and type in the notes. 

Adding annotations from pdf files to notes:

If you annotate your PDF files using third-party software (such as Adobe Reader, FoxIt, PDF-XChange, or Mac OS X's Preview) that writes annotations to the file, the synced file in Zotero  will include your annotations.

To create a new note from the annotations in the current PDF, In the Zotero library,

• Open the PDF in a new window.
• Select the annotation(s) from which you want to create a new note.
• Right click the reference and click 'Add Note from Annotations' 
• The selected annotations are added to  notes.

After importing references from various sources, you may have duplicate references in your Library. Zotero creates a sub folder for duplicates. 

Select the  duplicate references to be merged using the merge option. 

Zotero allows you to create Sub-Collections to organize references.

Simply drag and drop any references into Collections

Zotero provides free online storage space of 300MB allowing you to synchronize PDFs, images, web snapshots. Additional storage space need to be purchased.

If you do not want associated pdfs and snapshots to  be attached while adding references in order to save the storage space, in Zotero, click Edit <Preferences < General. In File Handling untick 'Automatically take snapshots when creating items from webpages' and 'Automatically attach associated PDFs and other files when saving items'. (These options are selected by default)